our life abroad

Menu

Happy things

We’ve had some exciting developments in the last few weeks. My mind has been all over the place with preparing to leave Kosovo, making plans for home leave, and thinking ahead to what needs to happen when we arrive in Tbilisi (pesky little details like finding a job and a nanny), and we were also away for 9 days on our road trip.

Almost immediately after learning we’d be moving to Tbilisi, we reached out to the CLO (Community Liaison Office) there to ask to start receiving their newsletter (talks about events happening, things to see in the area, and a classified section for cars and other items for sale). We enjoy receiving the updates to give us an idea of what life will be like for us. We were also loosely keeping an eye on the cars listed for sale. JR has loved his our car since he bought it in Columbus several years ago. It’s a VW Passat and it’s been paid off for a while, so we didn’t really plan to buy something new. The government will ship one POV (privately owned vehicle) for us to our next post, just like they shipped the Passat here. So that was really the plan all along.

Until we saw the listing for a 2008 Toyota Rav 4. We both like Rav 4s, and this one had really low mileage, one-owner, and the price was reasonable. Operation Convince JR to Buy a Car began in earnest. Somewhat surprisingly, he immediately agreed to list our car for sale here, and said as long as we could sell our car, we could buy the new one. The catch was that we had a very limited time frame to figure this all out, and not much time at all for our car to be on the market. But I can happily report that we have sold our car, and signed a contract to buy the Rav 4! A great bonus is that the car will be ready for us upon arrival, so we won’t have to wait a few months to have a vehicle in Tbilisi.

I applied for four EFM (eligible family member) jobs there, and had a phone interview for one of the positions that sounded really interesting. They offered me the job and I quickly accepted. My start date won’t be determined until my security clearance is sorted out, but it is a huge relief to have my employment figured out already. The newsletter also advertises available nannies, and we found someone to interview and hire – all over e-mail and Skype. I feel like we are already so ahead of the game for Tbilisi!

But I saved the best update for last. WE GOT TICKETS TO SEE GARTH BROOKS WHILE WE’RE HOME!!! This is really like a dream come true. You may recall that I have always, always hoped for a chance to see Garth perform live. I’m like, Jessie Spano excited over here.